Page 101 - VHSA - Onderstepoort 100 Years - Part 3

ONDERSTEPOORT 100 Veterinary Public Health
C.M. VEARY
DEarly beginnings (1922-1959)
uring the first decade or so after its foundation in 1908, the scientific activities of the Onderste- poort Veterinary Institute were not formally organized in terms of discipline-based sections
or departments. Following the example of its founder Arnold Theiler the small number of researchers, though specialized to some extent, all became involved in combating the diseases of greatest economic importance, whatever their aetiology. Their activities included research, field work and the development and production of vaccines, and diseases included lamsiekte, nagana, East Coast fever, African horsesickness, plant toxi- coses and others. The need to specialize in a specific discipline became more important when the Faculty of Veterinary Science was established in 1920 as an inte-
The term hygiene is derived from
the Greek goddess Hygeia, daughter of
Asclepius, the god of healing. She was the
symbol of health and hygiene, its promotion
and preservation. Hygiene is therefore a very
inclusive term which was defined in various
ways over the years and often combined
with other disciplines for academic purposes.
Hygiene was separated from infectious diseases in 1923 and E.M. Robinson, who had assisted Du Toit as lecturer in hy- giene, was transferred to a new Department of Bacteriology.
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of Veterinary Field Services where he eventually retired as head. In 1932 general hygiene was formally incorporated into municipal hygiene. The course was subsequently again divided into general hygiene and municipal hygiene and it now included the bacteriology of milk.
From the beginning of 1934 municipal hygiene was ele- vated to an independent professorship in a new Department of Municipal Hygiene (later to be called the Department of Hygiene and Animal Management). General hygiene and animal management remained as but a subject within the new department and was taught by one lecturer. P.J.J. Fourie, then Professor in Pathological Physiology, was appointed as the first head of the Department of Hygiene and Animal Management, a position he filled until his retirement in 1959. He had contributed to veterinary science in many fields since
gral part of the Institute and researchers were selected for teaching the required subjects. Thus the first reference to what later became known as veterinary public health was the appointment of P.J. du Toit as the first Professor of Hygiene and Infectious Diseases in 1922.
“The term hygiene is derived from the Greek goddess Hygeia, daughter of Asclepius, the god of healing. She was the symbol of health and hygiene, its promotion and preservation.”
his appointment at Onderstepoort in 1922. He started his career producing anthrax vaccine, assisted with lamsiekte research at Armoedsvlakte, worked on internal parasites and congenital porphyria and lectured in pharmacology, pathology, medicine and pathological physiology before his transfer to Hygiene. He played a major role in the campaign for independence for the Faculty and was its Dean from 1951 to 1955. After his retirement from the civil service in 1954 and from the Faculty in 1959 he served as public relations officer at Onderstepoort until his final retirement in 1960.
Hygiene became a separate department in the Faculty and included various subjects such as municipal hygiene, animal management (which included general hygiene) and state veterinary medicine. P.R. Viljoen taught state and municipal hygiene and H.H. Curson was responsible for animal management. In 1926 the department was renamed ‘State Veterinary Medicine and Municipal Hygiene’ and was headed by P.R. Viljoen, who became Deputy Director of Onderstepoort in 1927. In 1931 general hygiene, separated from animal management, was added as a subject and the department attained independent departmental status with full representation on the Senate of the University of Pretoria. P.S. Snyman, who qualified in 1924 in the first group of Onderstepoort students, was head of the new department until he resigned in 1934 to join the Division
At Onderstepoort,
Growth and consolidation (1959-1973)
In 1959 L.W. van den Heever, a recipient of the Theiler Medal, took up the joint appointment as Head of the Section of Veterinary Food Hygiene and Public Health at the Institute and Senior Lecturer in ‘Special Hygiene of Meat and Milk’ at the Faculty, a name later to be changed to ‘Veterinary Food Hygiene and Public Health’, when the course was expanded to include mastitis. He was largely respon- sible for raising the standard of his discipline to an interna- tional level, both in terms of research at the Institute and in the training of students. His research mainly concerned the diagnosis and control of mastitis but also included pioneering studies on health aspects of biltong, including the possibility of contamination with measles, Salmonella and other micro- organisms during processing. He was also co-discoverer of Parafilaria bovicola as the cause of false bruising in slaughtered cattle. As lecturer he taught food hygiene to undergraduate students in the last two years of their course and included
Veterinary Public Health
1908-2008
Years